Gelli™ Printing with DIY Foam Printing Plate Stamps!

They're so easy and fun to make, you'll have a collection of these stamps in no time!

Express your creativity by making the stamps for printing your cards!

There's a variety of materials that you can use to make a texture stamp. Here we're using thin
sheets of foam—available at art stores for use as printmaking plates. It cuts easily with scissors
or a craft knife—and drawing into it with a pen, pencil, stylus or other pointed tool gives you endless
design opportunities!

Decorative-edge scissors cut smoothly through the thin foam material—and hand punches work
well too! If you have a die-cutting machine (like a Cuttlebug, etc.)—you can run it through with
an embossing folder and create a very cool embossed surface on the foam. Then cut your own
shapes from the embossed printing foam!

Instead of the foam sheets for printmaking, you can also use styrofoam plates or repurposed
clean food trays. Incise lines into the pieces with a pencil, ballpoint pen or stylus. Cut or punch out some
small areas. The design can be simple shapes, or as intricate as you want. You can plan your
design beforehand, or just wing it!

As you make your marks in the foam, keep in mind that what you see is what you get. So that
means you can write words in the foam too! No need to figure out reversals—how perfect for
adding a sentiment to your cards!

Strathmore has a new line of printmaking paper and they've made it into beautiful card and envelope
sets. The cards and envelopes shown here are all printed on Strathmore Printmaking Cards.

The following steps describe the process shown in the video for creating the Gelli printed card:

Roll a thin layer of acrylic paint onto the Gelli plate with a brayer

Press a texture tool (like bubble wrap) into the paint

Cover with your card and pull a print

Wipe the plate clean (not essential—but makes a nice clean print)

Roll a layer of a contrasting color onto the plate with a brayer

Place your foam stamps on the painted plate

Cover with thin paper (such as deli paper)—to press the stamps into the paint and remove
the paint from the plate around the stamps

Remove the cover paper and remove the foam stamps

Place your printed card on the Gelli plate to print a second layer

Rub to transfer the paint and pull your print—the second layer on your card!

TIP: Your printed image will 'pop' more if the paint colors for each layer are of different value
(light/dark). You'll get very different results with transparent paints vs. opaque ones. Metallic
paints also offer an exciting option as one of the layers.

While you're printing your cards, also print on the envelopes! There are various ways to create a
blank space for the address. Here are a few suggestions:

Strategically place a piece of torn or cut paper on the painted, stamped Gelli plate to create a
blank space.

Place a removable label on the envelope as a mask. Print over it—then remove the label.

Scrape or wipe off an area of wet paint on the Gelli plate, then print your envelope.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!!!!

Winner is Roberta K!

And to show OUR love—we have an exceptional GIVEAWAY for cardmaking!!!

The prize kit includes: 1 - 5"x7" Gelli Arts Gel Printing Plate1 - Strathmore Printmaking Cards - Package of 50 Cards and Envelopes 8 - Amsterdam Standard Series Acrylic Paint - 120 ml tubes (4.1 fl. oz.) 1 - Speedball 4" Pop-In Soft Rubber Brayer1 - Inovart 'Presto' Foam Printing Plates - Package of 20 - 9"x12" sheets To enter the giveaway, click on the red "ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE" button below! (This
will ensure that we can contact the winner and that entries are limited to one per person.
One winner will be selected from all the entries via a random number generator to receive
this very special giveaway!) Entries will be accepted until Wednesday, February 25th at 1pm.
Our lucky winner will be contacted by email and announced here on the blog and on
our Facebook page no later than Wednesday, the 25th at 5pm!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!!!!

Special thanks to our friends at Strathmore for their generous donation to our giveaway prize! Remember, we now have Gelli partners all over the world, so it's easier than ever to find
a Gelli retailer near you!

I was very lucky to get a Gelli plate over Christmas and I had no idea you could do that with foam plates. Thank you for the awesome video of techniques. I need to get some foam plates, paints, and other stash because I love what you've created and now I feel a little more confident Karen x

This looks like so much fun! It would be awesome to have your kids draw pictures on the foam plates and then print away on the Gelli plate for cards to send to relatives! Oh the possibilities- very exciting!

Thank you for all the wonderful ideas in the regular videos ! I just tried putting the polystyrene packaging base of a pizza thru my ebosser in an embossing folder and it worked! The resulting print is pretty amazing. The pizza base is cheaper as it's thrown away otherwise, and the foam boards I got in an art shop a year or so ago cost a fortune ... but mustn't live on pizza alone !!!

Scratchfoam is great! It's one of my go-to techniques. I usually let the paint stayon the plate and only wash it occasionally. The resulting prints seem "grungier"--which I love. I brayer-roll over them all the time, too, for overlapping (or not) brayerprints. The scratch foam seems to really "lift" transparent paint off the plate, too, for a more precise design. If I'm lucky, I can apply paint to the plate and use it as a stamp,and some extra paint layer grunge from the stamp may come off. Cool. ----Becky

I've been saving deli trays just to try this. Thanks for inspiring me to raid my stash and play. I also love that you used mandalas in your example. I shared this video with my peeps who participate in my 100 Mandalas Challenge. (www.100mandalas.org and www.facebook.com/100mandalas) I'm always looking for fun and creative ways to create mandalas. My fingers are crossed that I win the giveaway - what a generous prize!

What a wonderful tutorial! I wish I had watched it the first day, because I just passed up buying some of those foam sheets because I didn't have a specific purpose for buying it. Darn hindsight! Guess I'll go back and see if it is still there! Unless I get lucky and win some from this giveaway! ;)

Perfect timing with this video, I just bought a friend a 5x7 plate. We are going to have a printing party using some of these techniques! I have a 6x6 plate, it's going to be fun! Thanks for the tutorial.

Ooh, I just love my Gelli Arts plate! After wanting one for year, I finally bought one (8 x 10 inch) with Christmas gift money that I was given. I had SO much fun making wonderful paintings with it! I am using very very inexpensive paints, so the stencils don't seem to be working very well. So, I just blended and smushed paint blobs and some gloss acrylic medium, and had fun making very colourful abstract prints - wonderful for backgrounds for cards, and some I really like just as paintings! It is so good for my soul to have vibrant glorious colours here in the middle of a snowy winter in Canada! Thank you to Gelli Arts for a wonderful product, and for very informative and inspiring videos!

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